Book excerpt: A perfect companion to Max's Words, Max's Math from author Kate Banks and illustrator Boris Kulikov features fun math concepts like shapes, matching, and counting. Max and his two brothers hop into a car and go looking for problems they can solve. They cruise down highway number 4 on their way to Shapeville, but they see an abandoned number along the way. Is it a 6? Is it a 9? And what's it doing on the side of the road? Once the trio reach Shapeville, there's another problem: a flood washed away all of the squares. Max and his brothers show the town that putting together two triangles will bring their shapes back together, and then they follow the residents on a trip to Count Town, where they put the missing number back in its place in the countdown to a rocket's blastoff. This title has Common Core connections.